… the objective of the Victorian “Dress Reform Movement” which was also called the “Rational Dress Movement”. Reformists were mostly middle class women involved in the first wave of feminism in the United States and Britain from the 1850’s through the 1890’s, but it persisted into the next century.
The movement emerged in the Progressive Era along with calls for temperance, women’s education, suffrage, and moral purity.
(Photo: Key Reformists like Mileva Roller in this 1908 Reform gown were also advocates of women’s rights)